


with the lambs on the run

by orphan_account



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-12
Updated: 2015-01-12
Packaged: 2018-03-07 06:09:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3164183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was not often Kanaya had the opportunity to entertain guests down in the caverns, but here one was before her: Aradia not with a whip but a set of knives and numerous jars strapped onto her back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	with the lambs on the run

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sermna](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sermna/gifts).



It was not often Kanaya had the opportunity to entertain guests down in the caverns, but here one was before her: Aradia not with a whip but a set of knives and numerous jars strapped onto her back. Her curly hair fell free across her shoulders and down her back. Her outfit was perhaps a sartorical joke: all in white with too many pockets. 

“Oh, good,” Aradia said. “I knew you’d still be here. Let me in?” 

“You’ve avoided conscription,” Kanaya said, a little surprised. Although obviously, she had, too. She was wet up to her elbows and thighs with slime from the birthing chambers. She likely had a grub stuck to the bottom of her shoe. After a moment, when it became clear that Aradia had not trekked all the way down here just to say hello, she said, “What are you doing here?” 

“I have some specimen I thought you might like.” 

“I’m not one of those strange trolls who collect body parts,” she protested, but Aradia was already inserting herself in the gap between Kanaya and the door. 

Her personal chamber was at least somewhat taller than the main hall. And she had the entire hole to herself. Her roommate, an elderly jadeblood with only one eye, had died the sweep prior in her sleep. Aradia put some of the jars on the box Kanaya was currently using as a table. It was a grub newly out of the chambers. White tumors grew out of it like cauliflowers. 

“Am I supposed to eat this?” Kanaya said after a moment. “It is considered a delicacy. When it grows on plants.” 

“This is the sixth or seventh I’ve found just on my way over here,” Aradia said. “I thought you’d want to know. And more than that, wouldn’t it be fun to have an adventure?” 

“No.” 

“Come on. That can’t be true.” 

“I enjoy working here. It gives me a sense of purpose and competence.” 

“That’s exactly what I expected to hear from you,” Aradia said, admiring. “All right, let me word it another way: if I told you I found your Mother grub in there, would that change things?” 

\--- 

They traveled at night, staying away from the drone trails and instead marching down uncleared, thorny paths. Aradia was a good traveling companion: capable of amusing herself and experienced with the terrain. 

“What have you been doing these last few sweeps?” Kanaya said on the first night of camping. 

“Oh. I make my living digging up old ruins and artifacts for the Condesce. I bribed the drones when my conscription came up and the value was so high that they decided to have me go around fetching more of it. That’s how I found the cave.” 

“And how did you know…” 

“It’s process of elimination,” Aradia said. “Mother grubs are rare. There are hardly any out there. And you said that you lost yours. You never said yours was dead. So, why not?” 

“Hmm,” Kanaya said. 

 

They eventually reached Kanaya’s old hive, now overtaken by giant, white growth. Dissicated grubs littered the grounds. More living ones squelched wetly inside the hive. 

“Careful,” Aradia said. “The big ones are a problem.” 

“What big ones?” she said, before a giant, writhing white mass dropped out of the sky with a shriek. They made short work of it and the rest of its friends: Kanaya with her chainsaw and Aradia with her handy collection of whips. The infested creatures, whatever they were, leaked white pus on their deaths. 

The garden was still clean, though the plants had overrun it and the lack of intelligent irrigation had killed most of Kanaya’s work. But there were some flowers still growing in ragged lines, and some trees still bore fruit. They gazed up at her hive, stripping the skin off the fruit and eating the flesh and parasites hidden within the rinds. 

“It would have been disassembled and taken apart by the drones even if this hadn’t happened,” Kanaya said with a sigh. 

“Oh, yes,” Aradia said. “This is actually very valuable for me from a work perspective. If you’re lucky, your hive might be preserved for all time, giving future troll archeologists an opportunity to really dig into what life was like for trolls in this time.” 

“That sounds like something that would be interesting if I could muster being interested in it.” 

“Kanaya, I’ve been wondering. You knew what this was. And it’s growing all over your hive.” 

“So you think I did this?” Kanaya said. “So what if I did?” 

“Actually, if you did do it, you’d get a medal from the Empire. I wasn’t accusing you. I just wanted to know.”

“I didn’t know anything. And while we are accusing me of things senselessly in my own hive, I did not misplace my own mother grub, either. You don’t know how lonely it is down there—how miserable I have been down there!” She broke off. She didn’t want to look up. 

“I might have an idea,” Aradia said. “You’re the first troll I’ve seen in three perigees—well, the first I haven’t had to kill on sight to protect my stake.” She used a beetle’s horns to clean out her teeth. “But it’s all right, isn’t it? All I wanted was to know.” 

 

Eventually they came to a cavern that frothed white. Grubs spilled out of the earth, halfgrown babes with fungus springing out of their raw backs. Kanaya felt a kind of pity for them, but also a hunger. More of the large ones were here, and by now they were skilled at dispatching them: a whip here, a chainsaw there. 

“The fungus seems to be hijacking the mother grub’s reproductive systems,” Aradia said. “I didn’t know things could do that.” 

“That’s disgusting,” Kanaya said. 

“And sad, isn’t it? Just think: the mother grub lost forever, never destined to fulfill its purpose—oops. Just stepped in something.” 

In the breeding caverns, Kanaya’s job was to clean the mother grub’s body between slurry deposits, work that seemed to consist almost entirely of increasing her tolerance for being surrounded by pools of aged slurry and dried skin and strange placental liquids. She remembered, a few times, seeing strange white-yellow growths surrounding the mother grubs’ bellies. The older jadebloods would always murmur, “Oh, no,” and get to work, scrubbing so hard that Kanaya always feared they’d rip the grubs in two. 

Ah, but who knew what strange horrors lived down here—white, like her future, a cold canvas with nothing on it. 

When they stepped out of the cavern, Kanaya felt dazed and dizzy, unable to place herself or anything in her past or her future. Aradia, behind her, was saying, “You know, we could make a fortune off this.” 

“Could we?” Kanaya said. 

“Why not?” she said. “Collect all this, sell it, and buy a ship to go somewhere else.” 

“All right,” she said, a little bleak. Aradia’s horns flashed golden in the sunlight and she went back into the caves, her little jars prepared. Dazed, Kanaya followed her down.


End file.
